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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

.......You Are the Harbinger Of Death

Sooty Tern. This is one of my favorite shots Ive taken since Ive been here. It may appear I'm a good photographer but this dude/lady was only a few feet above my head.

Sports are weird. I've never been very good at most of them. That's probably why I turned into a nerd, started watching birds and listening to punk rock. For all these reasons and more, I have always been grateful that I'm not very good at sports. I've been playing a lot of volleyball lately though, and its pretty fun. I play badly enough to claim that I suck, but well enough to justify playing. Good enough for me. Have you ever noticed that a lot of sports players don't have a very artistic side to them? Its like they weren't built for that. These are the people who thought (and maybe still do) that Limp Bizkit was a good band and that Metallica is better than Slayer. Yeah theres a bunch of exceptions, but there's exceptions to everything.

Moby Dick, The Great White Albatross (Chick). He lives next to Sunrise Seep on Sand Island.

Things are mellow here on Midway. Life is good. It would be incredible to get paid to be here and still do field work.....but those chances are few and far between. The monk seal people here fall into that category, and they all seem pretty great. They leave Thursday morning though, which sucks. One of the guys who lives here has mentioned a couple times what a bummer it is to get to know someone and befriend them here, only to have them leave and never see them again. Its a bit depressing, I reckon, and I can see what he's talking about.

There are ducklings all over the islands now. They are very cute, and although they lack predators in the true sense of the word, most ducklings don't live very long. This one was only a couple of days old, and probably got attacked by another duck. Besides getting beat up on by members of their own species, the Laysan Albatross will often grab a duckling given the opportunity. They don't kill them out of maliciousness, they just see them as playthings. Albatross and human children are not all that different from each other....except I would much rather hang out with an albatross.